Still on the Ring of Fire

---

Towards the Andes, deeper in the vast dryness of the desert is San Pedro de Atacama. It is a small town of clay-brick houses and a white-painted church next to the plaza.
The broad valley around San Pedro is formed by some salty erroded desert hills in the west and the rising Andes in the east which form a dramatic backdrop of a chain of snowcapped volcanos at the border between Chile and Bolivia. Most remarkable on one end the high peak of Licancabur towers over it all.
San Pedro's townsfolk, their thin belt of green fields around town, and of course the lavish tourists all depend on the sparse waters of a small river running down the valley and nearly drying up afterwards.

During daytime you better get into the shade here. The sun is rather pitiless. The early morning and the evening hours are the time for some activity.
One evening I took a bike to the nearby Moon Valley. Some big dunes of black sand rise in a dry salty valley. Over the ages sun and wind have shaped weired structures from the salt and the desert rock. I visited during sunset which ment that I had to go back in the dark. Naturally the bike didn't have a light. So I had to bite on my torch for an hour and a half for a rough ride back through the desert...
One morning I took the long busride to the northwestern El Tatio plateau. Around sunrise we got to the thermal area and in the freezing cold of dawn we could witness the steaming and boiling geysers melt away the ice of the past night. Warming up in a hot pool was a welcome option. On the way back we saw lots of llamas and vicunas, small indigena village communities, and a salt lagune.

Passing the huge coppermine Chuquicamata at Calama I made my way once again up into the Andes to cross the border into Bolivia. From the Andes pass I had a first view over the Altiplano, a high altitude plateau in west Bolivia. The spaces up there are vast and the distant horizon is blured into the infinity of the sky.

---

Photos

Plaza and Church in San Pedro de Atacama
The church roof is made of cactus wood and clay. People just used the only materials available.

The Andes
Rising from the Atacama Desert as a chain of snowcapped vulcanos.

El Tatio Plateau
From San Pedro at about 2500m it is a long way up to the more than 4000m high plateau of the El Tatio Geysers.

Before Sunrise
The night froze what now breaks apart again.

Small Salt Lagune
Not all the white stuff is snow and ice.

Moon Valley
Some huge black sand dunes rise in an eeriely dry part of the desert near San Pedro.

Track towards Bolivia
It seems like the end of the world (once more...). Up in the Andes the horizon streches into the infinity of the Altiplano.

El Cambio de Buses
Bus changing scene. On the right the Chilean bus. On the left the Bolivian bus. In the middle all the folks is running around the border post. The mighty vulcano is watching.